Moody Mark, sunny Stephen

WHEN Mark Carney was governor of the Bank of Canada he made a habit of warning his compatriots that a day of reckoning was coming if they did not stop piling up debt. The central bank would not keep interest rates low forever. Eventually the overnight rate would rise from 1%, where it has been since 2010, putting pressure on indebted Canadians.

Mr Carney is now grappling with Britain’s overleveraged consumers. His successor at the Bank of Canada, Stephen Poloz, has been delivering a cheerier message since he took over in June, even though household debt and house prices are at record levels (see chart). He has expressed confidence that Canadian consumers are doing the arithmetic in order to manage their debts, and looks forward to the day when exports and investment drive economic growth. Has the situation changed, or just the man?

Some of this is due to a difference in style. Mr Carney revelled in blunt talk; Mr Poloz exudes optimism and is a self-described “glass-half-full” kind of central banker. He may simply be putting the best face on the bank’s reluctance to raise rates when the Canadian economy is sluggish. GDP rose by 1.7% on an annualised basis in the second quarter, with the consumer still leading the charge.

Or Mr Poloz may see a recent increase in the ratio of household debt to income as a blip. He takes comfort from the fact that before household debt popped back up in the second quarter of 2013, it had edged down for two quarters. The bank’s position is that government and regulators have to help rein in consumers. Both have tried. Jim Flaherty, the finance minister, has repeatedly tightened rules on mortgage accessibility in the past few years; he reckons enough has been done to avert a housing bubble.

Outsiders are not so sanguine. The Economist’s latest house-price index showed that prices were 74% overvalued when compared with rents and 30% above fair value against income. An OECD ranking in June put Canada third behind Belgium and Norway in a league table of overheated markets. Robert Shiller, an American economist credited with forecasting the housing bust there, has worried that Canada is experiencing the same thing “in slow motion”. The title of Mr Shiller’s best-known book? “Irrational Exuberance”.